Drifting accents

Oh dear.

I am rather the Queen of this. It's not my fault. I've moved too much.

Living in New York, on the other hand, didn't have as much effect, I suppose because the accent didn't seem as musical to me.

I kind of wish that my accent wasn't so mixed up, but I like it better than having a lancashire accent like my cousins (sorry if that offends anyone)

it basically means that scots think i sound english, and english ppl think i sound scottish. o well.

If I go back to Wolverhampton my accent reappears, but many people in London assume I'm from the Home Counties.

Kate + alcohol = the most english accent EVAH. Watching the transformation is a sight to behold.

And you were blaming me for the "You assumed I was a flaaaarrrrr that you could snap in two" line! ;-)

-- Ancients of LAUTRO

No, I blame Eoin for phrases. I blame you for making me sound like one of the Lovely Lovely Corrs in that song. (For the bennefits of others: Kate writes lyrics that scan in her [roughly] eastern US tones. If I sing them in the same way with my generic English accent I sound Irish.)

I spent most of my time speaking Dutch with a dreadful English that most locals find either endearing or downright amusing :-(

I have yet to say 'they' instead of 'those', or 'aye' or 'hen'.

When I lived in Manchester, I said 'no' in a very particular way. When I get drunk, I do a good scouse. J0hn P0wer thought I was taking the piss, which is no bad thing I suppose.

When I worked in France, I was told that people in the office referred to me as the English girl who talks like a French girl (rust has set in and this is definitely no longer the case) and I was three times mistaken for a native Italian when I lived in Italy (the accent hasn't slipped as badly as French and I can get it back towards the end of a week's holiday).

(i can't be offended here, because the correct answer - "blackpool" - is as embarrassing as it gets.)

ach. ian riese-moraine to thread.

In the North, people think I sound "posh" - ie, from the South

In Scotland, people can't tell whether I'm English or Scottish.

I thought it was "Does your actual accent change?" rather than "Do different people's perception of your accent change?"

But perhaps I need some more coffee.

Then I went to uni in Reading, lived there for 6 years then moved to London, so I've been in the south for 11 years and have lost most of the Worcester-isms and have picked up several London-isms (the dreaded "innit" etc).

Northernish, southernish, all points in between.

During our holiday in Spain, a liverpudlian woman asked if the bus was coming soon, and I replied "Ah hope so" in perfect scouse, which stunned me like I'd just burped unexpectedly.

Being a native Madrileña, when I came back to Madrid from Barcelona last May, many people mistook my accent by Catalan, which is most unwelcome down here. In either situation, a brief summary of my life is always handy.

every time i'm around native new yorkers, my new york accent gets more pronounced.

charlie you do speak AUSTRALIAN! not all the time like. but when you say aussie phrases you say them in an aussie accent. it's very sweet.

*ducks*

kate, i love how your englishness increases in direct proportion to your drunkenness. it's perfectly apposite.

i have zero accent loyalty. it goes all over the place, all the time. even mid-conversation, depending on who i'm talking to/who or what i'm thinking about/what music i've been listening to/what films or tv i've been watching/what mood i'm in/what stupid phrases i've had jammed in the back of my head for a few days/what colour the sky is. it's sort of crap but i'm sort of attached to my accentlessness now. i've been accused of being irish sometimes, geordie frequently, eastern european a few times, west country a lot, aussie and kiwi once or twice, scandinavian a LOT (once by someone who'd known me for about 3 years!), scottish a few times, south african quite often, south american once or twice... the geordie one makes most sense cos i grew up in wales and went to uni in the norf and if you put those two together you (sort of) get geordie. the cause for this is obvious: went to uwc in hong kong at 16 with a strong welsh accent then was surrounded by 250 other kids from all over the world, some of whom could barely speak english and half of whom couldn't understand a word most of the others said. i was the first person asim spoke to on campus and neither of us knew what the other one was going on about at all (odd, considering that when a lot of people try to do a welsh accent it comes out pakistani and vice versa). we all ended up with this bizarro placeless accent, bits of brit, bits of north america, bits of oceania, bits of fuckknowswhat, interspersed with random words of mandarin/cantonese/spanish. i loved that actually, the idea that there was nowhere else in the entire world that had quite the same accent as our little enclave. hm, it's our ten-year reunion next year. i wonder if we'll all revert to lpc-speak?

Do I count as having no accent then? grimly can probably judge it.

The only academic I ever knew who lived in Edinburgh was originally from Minnesota, IIRC.

Stevo, Dutch people have funny accents as well, so they shouldn't find it at all amusing. ;-)

no. you still have the same gentle south-of-england tones you've had for as long as i've known you. it's a lovely voice, actually: RP without being "poshly" so. prone to rising in the middle of sentences as you become enthusiastic about things.

but it keeps sliding into Windsor Davies

oh, how i wish i sounded like windsor davies. or indeed looked like him.

x-post: ew.

This isn't fair. I want all Ilxors Ihaven't met to sound appropriate to their place. I reinforces my idea of a nice global community. I am oddly gutted that Nick doesn't have Southern accent.

That depends. You down with LPC? Perhaps you could amplify the speeches with an LPC Soundsystem? No doubt there'll be plenty of LPC Newstalk at the reunion though. "When I was young/PC meant Per-leece Cun-stubble!" ectect

Sweetie, you speak like Hugh Grant. I can't imagine you ever having had a proper sarf London voice.

I'm glad Vicky said upthread other people though she had a West Country accent, I certainly did.

I'm equally glad I'm not the only one who thinks Grimly sounds more than a little Welsh.

i certainly don't: assimilating is (IIRC) a sign of intelligence (ie making your life easier by making sutle moves to fit in). at least, that's how i justify it to myself.

and i'm from fucking blackpool: why the hell would i want to preserve traces of that?

xpost, I do say "y'all" now, but I hated it as a kid.

(xpost x 2)

The funniest slipping in-and-out accent of anyone I know is a Canadian friend, he has a Scottish mom, lived in London when he was a kid, and then moved to Ottowa and then California. He sounds perfectly normal, and then 'aboot' will appear, or he'll come up something like 'we got into a row'.

I find my accent drifts depending on who I am with. I feel my accent a bit crass next to my better-spoken friends (i.e. most of them), so I tend to try harder not to sound like a sheep-shagging teuchter. I hope none of them think I'm taking the piss. On the other hand, I find my inner-boarding-school-ness making me think I sound too posh when at work so I overcompensate by slinging West of Scotland slang in (which is starting to come naturally to me now).

I think I remain recognisably Invernessian though.

I can't remember what grimly talks like, but I'm now convinced it is like Windsor Davies. I don't think I thought it was NE England anyway. aldo is definitely from Fife, that much is clear.